Estes Curvilinear #3231, Build, Parts 3, Fixing a Body Tube Crimp

Here's the only picture I could find of the finished 18mm engine mount.
I was curious to see if the difference in weights would be close to the clay nose weight needed later on. It wasn't!

The 18mm mount weighed .85 oz. with a B6-4 engine installed.
The 13mm mount weighed .42 oz with the A10-3t engine.

I'm building two kits.
One of the body tube ends had a small crimp. It shouldn't hurt the strength of the model especially if I put it on the bottom, hidden by the tail ring.

The nose cone was slid into the crimped end for strength in the next step.
A small pool of medium CA glue was set onto some scrap cardboard. A Q-tip was dipped in the CA and rubbed on the crimped area but clear of the nose cone shoulder joint. (I didn't want to glue the nose cone in.)

Before the glue sets, quickly rube over the glued, crimped area with a hard, smooth burnisher. You should be able to smooth out a slight crimp by molding the wet tube. The nose cone shoulder underneath lets you press fairly hard with the burnisher.
Remove the nose cone so it doesn't get glued in the tube.

Estes Curvilinear #3231, Build, Parts 2, 18mm Engine Mount

Here's the parts for the 18mm mount. I'll be doing my replaceable Kevlar mount on this one.
Hang onto the kit's 13mm mount. You'll need it to figure out the Center of Gravity from the original 13mm design.

The 20/60 centering rings are from BMS and cut from black Letramax board.
After punching out the engine hook relief holes, the tips were cut off to square off the sides.
Directly on the other side is the Kevlar tube holes, leave these as is.

On the left is the lower ring with the larger engine hook slot.

On the right is the upper ring. There is a very small partial punch to go over the top of the engine hook.

The inside of the centering rings were a little large for the BT-20 engine mount tube.
To bring down the inside diameter a ring of glue was applied and allowed to dry. This little bit of glue gave a good friction fit over the BT-20 tube.

Range Box Stickers!

Years back you'd find vendor stickers in mail orders and NARAM welcome packages. They were usually printed on fluorescent stock.
While in California I always keep an eye out for some old rocket materials. These were on the inside of a large binder containing correspondence to all the vendors. I found a few letters from Estes thanking me for all my "suggestions".

Estes Curvilinear #3231, Build, Parts 1, Parts

Here's another kit from the recent Estes clearance sales. Why build a kit from a sale? I would think many blog readers would have also picked this one up and it's waiting in their build pile.
Parts are of good quality. There turned out to be a few turns along the way.
I really like the design, except for one thing. The only recommended engine is the A10-3t. With any luck (and a bit of nose weight) I'll be able to fly it with 18mm A8 and B6 engines.

Parts of interest:
The decal sheet has white on it which is hard to see on the white backing paper.
The laser cut balsa is very clean, especially the slots for the ring tube.



That ring tube is very heavy walled. I thought it might be a BT-70 like the old Estes Sprite.

It's actually a 2" diameter tube like you would see in the Pro Series II models. (So far, this is the closest I've gotten to real Pro Series II parts!) A standard tube wall is shown on the left. The Curvilinear tube is on the right.

California Trip -

I'm off to California for the next three weeks helping out with some family matters.
I'll be gone from today, October 4 through Wednesday, October 25.

There might only be one post per day. My Mom doesn't have internet so I usually do a daily trip to McDonald's for the free wi-fi.

Thanks for your support, I'll post when I can!

Estes Curvilinear Background

When I first saw the Estes Curvilinear it reminded me of the old Sprite design.
Only 75 cents in 1969! 

It used the old Series III short engines, 18mm X 1.75" long.
The rocket was only 5.3" tall.
The tail ring was an RT-70 at .7" long.
Balsa sheet was BFS-40, 1/8" thick.

Semroc makes a BT-30 based Sprite kit using 13mm T engines.
The Tumbleweed from Fliskits also uses T engines but is BT-5 based.

This one used tumble recovery. Here's some recovery suggestions from the instructions.


In the original Estes Sprite kit, fins were cut out of 1/8" balsa, no laser cut parts here!
I remember that fin cap piece being hard to get right. The fin pattern layout didn't give much balsa if you screwed one up.






"Curvilinear". . . Where did that name come from?
I looked it up:
Curvilinear definition: "Consisting of or bounded by curved lines."
Well, it's bounded by the tail ring I guess.

I don't know if the Curvilinear design was based on the old Sprite or not. But, it sure reminded me of that little rocket.

Estes Scout Ship Nova Build #1392, Finished

After all the vinyl was applied the model got a light dusting of flat clear coat.
The original kit had yellow and green decals. The yellow and blue are a better combination keeping with the blue windows on the Starship Nova sister ship.
This model is smaller than the Starship Nova, the finished length is just under 15".

I really like that the rear raised engine tube visually balances against the drop nose at the front.